


Sea of Waking Dreams

by thecarlysutra



Category: Thunderheart (1992)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-15
Updated: 2010-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-13 16:41:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecarlysutra/pseuds/thecarlysutra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holly wanted the boys to get it on during the film's timeline.  <i>And I will be the one to hold you down, kiss you so hard I'll take your breath away.</i>  Prompt and title from Sarah McLachlan's "Possession."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sea of Waking Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [myhappyface](https://archiveofourown.org/users/myhappyface/gifts).



  
Grampa’s couch probably predated the television. Not the rickety old set playing fuzzy reruns of _I Love Lucy_ ; the actual invention. The sagging cushions were as soft as a mouse’s nest, so insubstantial that Ray felt less like he was being supported, and more like he was just floating. It was becoming a familiar state.

It was a small couch, and Ray sat wedged between Grampa and Crow Horse. Grampa talked in Lakota, telling Ray about why Lucy and Ricky’s marriage worked, even though they were so different, and that _Wasi’chu_ girl Lucy was crazy. It was the red hair; all red hairs were crazy. As he spoke, his hands moved like a conductor’s baton guiding the orchestra along grand melodies, breaking now and again to pat Ray on the knee. Crow Horse translated dutifully, and Ray’s mind bobbed along in the dual streams of their voices.

It was a small couch. Ray and Crow Horse were hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder. Ray could not feel the structure of the sofa beneath him, but he could feel Crow Horse’s body pressing up against his. Stumbling away from the fire, his head reeling, Ray had not been able to feel the ground beneath his feet, but he had felt Crow Horse’s hands on his body, pulling back from the precipice, pulling him back to earth. Ray had been afraid, and he had held a gun on him, but Crow Horse had not been afraid. Ray had held a gun on him, and Crow Horse had just looked him in the eye and whispered him down. Ray was a virtual stranger, and the face of a hostile, conquering government, and Crow Horse had not flinched at the gun in his face; he had looked Ray in the eye and whispered him down.

Maybe Crow Horse could read minds, or maybe Ray’s feelings were on his face, but like he knew what Ray was thinking, Crow Horse placed his hand on Ray’s shoulder. He didn’t say anything, just kept translating for Grampa, but Ray felt the touch like an anchor tethering him to this time, this place.

The television went to test pattern. Grampa went to bed, and Crow Horse and Ray stumbled out into the dark night like they had spent the past hours drinking, not sitting on an old man’s couch watching grainy, black and white television echoes. Ray knew, with theoretical remove, that he needed to get back—he had been gone for hours without checking in—but he could not manage urgency. He raised his face to the sky, looked at the stars. He didn’t know there were so many stars.

Crow Horse walked Ray to his truck. “You okay?”

Ray looked down from the innumerable stars, back to the undersea landscape of the moonlit prairie and Crow Horse’s earnest face. He leaned against his car. The metal skeleton weighed a couple tons, but Ray felt it as he had felt Grampa’s worn old sofa, like it was nothing at all.

“I don’t know,” Ray said. It wasn’t what he meant to say, but it was, he realized, the truth.

Crow Horse nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. He put his hand on Ray’s shoulder again.

Ray felt grounded again. He closed his eyes. Crow Horse leaned past him, opening Ray’s door for him. Ray was sure of it now; he was losing his mind. He was seeing things, and hearing them, and disconnecting from the earth and his own body, and now he was pressing against Crow Horse’s reassuringly solid body, and he was kissing him.

This all had to be a hallucination, too, because Crow Horse hesitated a mere second and then folded his arms around Ray, and pushed him back against the truck. Crow Horse kissed him back, kissed him like breathing life back into him.

And Ray had to be going crazy, because it was the best and the most like himself he had felt in days.  



End file.
